


Left My Heart in Novac

by casecous



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Comfort Sex, Dead Money DLC, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunion Sex, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:14:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21863554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casecous/pseuds/casecous
Summary: The Courier makes her way back to Boone in Novac after visiting the Sierra Madre.
Relationships: Craig Boone/Courier (Fallout), Craig Boone/Female Courier
Comments: 26
Kudos: 172





	Left My Heart in Novac

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea since I played Dead Money years and years ago and I finally wrote this last winter, but never published it, so here we go.

It’s a long haul from the bunker to wherever the fuck it is she’s going. She’s a slow-moving target, dragging a bag of 37 pure gold bars like a dumbass with a suicide wish, because if a legion raiding party shows up, she might truly be fucked this time around. She shifts her rifle a little to the left as it slides from the sweat on her right shoulder. She'll deal with that as it comes though. And who's to say she doesn’t deserve it. You get shot in the head, make it out alive, you're supposed to do penance or some shit. Become a good person, make the world a better place, and here she is, for all intents and purposes- a grave robber, making her way across the Mojave with a bag full of treasure stolen from the dead. She's not saying she regrets it, at least not yet. She is who she woke up as, and she could use this money. Plus it’s not like she went there specifically to pull the heist, she was mostly curious and it was a good excuse to get away for a while. The way she figures, it's mostly about survival, not greed. Surviving the headshot, surviving the Sierra Madre, and now, the rest. 

She could really use Mr. New Vegas’ company. His smooth voice would be a welcome distraction from her own thoughts, but she sees her fingers turning that dial, hears the frantic beeping and the whine of white noise, and then sees her own brain exploding a beautiful red and grey painting across the yellow sand. Her neck itches, compounded by the heat of the sun, but she has no free hand to relieve it. Anyway, she’s not sure she believes in third chances, she’s pushing her luck as it is anyway, so the music stays off and she files away ‘fear of radios’ as another thing to fix on another day. That is, if she makes it through without dying of exhaustion or dehydration. She mentally takes stock of her bottles of water and thinks she'll be okay if she rations it, but only time and luck will tell. 

The sun pulses at her, angry and insistent, and she can feel her skin starting to pinken and sting. It’ll be a hell of a burn, she hopes she can find some aloe along the way. Her thoughts wander to Boone, who's hopefully still in Novac like he said he'd be, but that was weeks ago and she was only supposed to be gone for a few days. Still, it’s not like Boone to wander, he’s a creature of habit and only her presence had been the one thing to influence that otherwise. 

\--

“There’s some things I have to do. I’ll only be gone a few days, a week at most,” she tells him while shoving extra stimpaks in her bag.

He doesn’t say anything at first, just hands her a bottle of water and gives her a long, hard look through his sunglasses. She avoids the gaze, or tries to anyway.

“Without a spotter?” 

Sometimes they switched. She’d considered it, knows Boone would follow her anywhere now, but nah, she needs to get away. Clear her head, try not to overthink about _feelings_ and wanting what she can’t have. His presence was becoming too big a distraction trapped in the walls of the presidential suite. Life keeps throwing things her way unexpectedly and she keeps fumbling her way through somehow. They were business partners first, turned friends, turned whatever it is you call two lonely people who sometimes fuck in the dark and then never talk about it afterward. Fuck buddies sounds too crude, she still considers him a friend foremost. Honestly, falling for a guy still not completely over his dead wife takes the cake in her list of fuck-ups and continued non-restraint. She’s gotten too greedy for her own good. 

“I’ve spent the majority of my life without one, you know.” She was fine on her own until she almost, you know, died.

“Yeah,” is all he says, like yeah, but that wasn’t at all what I was asking. She hates that she’s also gotten so good at interpreting his one word answers. 

She doesn’t respond, just keeps packing, because honestly if he asks if she’s sure, she won’t be. Hell, she isn’t sure now. But he won’t offer again, thankfully.

“Think I’ll head back to Novac while you’re gone,” he continues. “Get away from the city.”

She meets his eyes finally, her hands stilling on the box of shells. She imagined him staying here, cleaning his guns and drowning himself in whiskey all alone in the suite. But maybe Novac will be better for him? He hasn’t been back since he left, and who knows, maybe he still cares about Manny more than he lets on. They were more brothers than friends after all, and brothers can fuck you over but you’ll still be family. Or maybe this is him being done with their arrangement for good. He holds her gaze, waiting for a response.

“Ok,” shes says carefully, “I’ll meet you there then?” Novac is in the same direction of where she’s going, but she won’t tell him that. She maps the long way around in her head to take instead.

He’s not even 100% sure she’ll come back. This could be her letting him down easily, maybe she wants to disappear. Or worse, get herself killed. But like he’s really one to talk. He’ll give her that kindness if it’s what she wants, it’s maybe the one thing he can truly empathize with.

“Alright,” he agrees, easily.

She breathes out, not realizing she was holding it, schools her face into a smile, and shoves the ammo into her bag.

“Good.”

An hour later, she gives him a two fingered salute outside the Lucky 38, says, “See you around, partner,” and they both walk their separate ways. She forces herself not to turn back around for a final glance, but after two steps he calls out to her and she has to anyway. 

“Be careful, alright?” 

His voice is a tinge warmer than usual and her traitorous heart jumps. Give it inches and it’ll take a mile. 

“You know me,” she smirks, her voice as dry as the Mojave. “Always am.” 

His lips twitch, and she tucks the sight away in her barely-filled ‘Boone smiling’ folder for safe-keeping, then turns back around, leaving him with the bustle of the strip. 

\--

God she'd do anything to see his stupid face again, even if he hadn't thought twice about hers. Had he? Here she is, missing him more than ever. She should have known, running from shit isn’t really her style, and how does that one saying go? ‘ _Absence makes the heart grow fonder_ ’ or some bullshit. 

She crunches the last of the bottle of water over her face and lets it drip down her neck. It's the third time she catches a shadow out of the corner of her eye and this time she nearly jumps the trigger into the closest cactus. She chokes, manages to turn the safety back on with a shaky finger before the smell of copper and sulfur flood her senses and she doubles over in a violent cough. The empty bottle and rifle clatter to the ground to join the bag as she begins to gasp for air. Her chest constricts and her heart thuds like a sledgehammer in her ears, she still can’t get any air in, the pressure too much. 

_Oh_ , she thinks, watching a distant joshua tree become a blurred black dot on the horizon and the sand around her fold inward at the edges. _Maybe I didn’t make it out after all._

And then just as soon as it started, it’s over. Her gasps slow as her lungs finally start to take in air again, the sun glares at her as if it never went anywhere at all, and the blue sky and the desert just _listen,_ waiting to see if she’ll do it again. Her lungs ache and her throat is even drier from sucking in too much hot air. She feels the prickle of tears in her eyes, but she can’t really afford to be crying by herself on the ground in the middle of the goddamn desert, so she clears her throat, pulls her aviators back down over her eyes with shaking hands, picks up her shit, and carries on. Just like she’s always done. 

\--

It’s 1am when she finally arrives. The Novac sign glimmers and buzzes in the distance like a holy beacon and despite her aching back and sunburnt skin, pure relief floods her. She glances warily at the t-rex, unable to make out if anyone is inside, and hopes selfishly that Boone hadn’t offered to take over the night shift again while he was back. God, the literal steps she’d have to climb to see him tonight. Surviving the Mojave, only to die on the steps inside a fake dinosaur in some podunk motel town is not really how she wants to go. Whoever is in the t-rex must recognize her though, because there's no bullet in her head and she passes easily. With the end goal in sight, her boots begin to scrape the asphalt with each step, until eventually they land in front of the blue door to his room. Her arm hangs heavy at her side, and it takes the rest of her willpower to lift it. She forms a fist and knocks twice with the end of it, rattling the doorknob in the process. Her throat starts to itch again and she coughs into her forearm on its way back down. She starts to shrug her bag off her back when there’s some shuffling from behind the door, a click, and it opens, just a crack at first, then all the way when he sees that it's her. Blinking against the light, she looks up at him, realizing that she expected him to look different somehow. More pale, or more tan, a beard or something, or more...happy? His sunglasses and beret are missing, discarded on the desk behind him, but other than that, and the transparent relief in his eyes, he’s the exact same Craig Boone she'd walked away from 3 weeks ago. Her heart thuds uselessly against her chest at that. She lets the bag slide off the rest of the way and it drops to the ground with a loud thud and metal clanging that echoes through the motel complex, and they both flinch enough to be noticeable. Something manic bubbles up inside her, she could laugh, maybe she does, and her goddamn mouth opens before he can say anything first.

“Howdy! We haven’t met yet, but I’m your neighbor just one floor up and to the right, and well, the thing is-” 

In one fluid motion, he takes his hand off the doorknob and pulls her directly into his chest, cutting off her bit. This is completely new territory. His arms are familiar, sure, but the hug itself isn't. Her mind races, as if she wasn't already feeling vulnerable enough. She wishes she could lift her arms to hug him back, to show him that she returns the sentiment, but he’s got them firmly trapped at her sides and she’s sure he knows anyway. Instead, she buries her nose into his t-shirt at the collar and closes her eyes, breathes him in. Familiar, the closest thing to a home she’s got, she finally feels safe. 

“Hey,” he breathes, a would-be whisper if not for his deep voice. His nose brushes her temple and they sway like that in the doorway. His tongue feels heavy around the “glad you’re alright,'' because he’s not sure if she is.

“Hey,” she responds, and her voice breaks with it.

_I missed you,_ they won’t say. 

It’s silent otherwise until he clears his throat and pulls away. She follows him in, dragging her bag and shutting the door behind her as he takes her main rifle from her hand and sets it on the table next to his. It’s a comforting sight, those two beauties together again. She hands him the holorifle next and he takes a long, deep look at it before setting it down.

“Take longer than you thought?” He breaks the silence with the question, not an accusation. He can see how ragged she is, how exhausted. _‘Ran into trouble?_ ’ is a stupid question they both already know the answer to, and ' _How much?'_ is still under consideration.

“Something like that,” she says looking around his room, anywhere but him. Would he even believe her? “I got…” she starts. _Taken, kidnapped, shock-collared, and drugged,_ her mind offers. _I went to the Sierra Madre and all I got were these lousy new symptoms of pre-existing PTSD!_ She clears her throat and starts over. “I earned some gold,” she gestures to her pack. “A lot of gold. Just had to drag it all the way back here.”

“Thought it sounded heavy.” 

“Nothing me and a couple buffouts couldn’t handle.”

He huffs out a laugh. The next movement he makes is so easy, so unassuming, but his fingers freeze on the dial as a strangled noise escapes her throat. His eyes cut to hers in a sharp question, then fall to her hand at her neck and back up. She’s not a bad talker, could be described as charismatic on her good days, but the words come out jumbled. 

“Radios. They've been a little - uh, terrifying? Lately. So.” She breathes out a little hysterical laugh.

“Ok,” he says, like that’s a normal sentiment put forth by a rational person. “We can leave it off then.”

“No- just. It’s fine. I want to try. I miss music like crazy. Can you just, stay ready to turn it right back off if I..." _freak out._ "If it's...bad?”

His fingers haven’t moved, so all he has to do is twist it one centimeter to the right, a click, and then Nat King Cole’s butter-smooth voice drifts gently into the room. Her head stays firmly in its place, her heart also, despite the wild rhythm it pounds in her chest. She breathes out and nods at him. His hand drops away and she sinks to the floor, her back pressed up against the end of the bed. She also half expected to hear Vera Keye’s sultry tones again, taking away another reality point from her. He watches her carefully and reaches for his bag next. 

“Need a drink?”

“God, yes, and a shower.” She closes her eyes. “Whiskey, please.”

He pours it neat into two glasses and she debates whether or not to tell him that this is a straight-from-the-bottle sort of night. She doesn’t. Just clinks his glass before tipping hers back and swallowing the whole pour. It burns on the way down, pooling warmly in her chest and belly, which is a nice replacement for the persistent itch from the cloud in the back of her throat. He slides down next to her, his right arm a cool, solid weight against her left as he reaches over with his opposite to pour her another. She watches the glass fill and decides maybe to take this one slow.

“Want to talk about it?”

She meets his eyes, nods her head ‘yes’ and says, “No” with a wry smile. “I think I need some more...time to settle everything in my head.”

He doesn’t push it, just sips his whiskey and nods once. Suddenly and terribly overwhelmed by how thankful she is for him, for this, she folds inward, buries her face in her arms at her knees, and starts to cry. She manages to choke out a “sorry,” at some point, but with his warm palm flat on her back, he tells her, “No reason to be sorry,” and that’s the end of it. 

She regains her composure, wipes away the wetness with her palm, pretends not to have bloodshot eyes and a million mysterious marks on her skin while he pretends not to have noticed them, sniffs, and asks, “What about you? What have you been up to?”

“Been doing some shifts up in the dino to pass the time,” he shrugs. “Been doing some thinking.”

“Uh-oh,” she teases him with an elbow to the arm, hiding the nudge of worry. “Nothing too strenuous, I hope?”

“Oh, fuck off.”

She grins and feels almost halfway normal again, or as close as she can get. 

“Do you like being back here though?”

He considers the amber liquid in his glass before answering. 

“Not really. Don’t really like being anywhere. Know I like being with you though.” His knee bumps hers, his face straight, serious - as usual, and she smiles again. _Back at you._ She was stupid to have ever gone by herself in the first place and she’s infinitely glad that he’s right where he said he would be even though she’s late, and that they’re able to fall back into whatever they are so easily.

“Hey, thanks for…” she gestures a little circle in the air with her glass in hand and the whiskey swirls with it.

He’s not sure what she’s thanking him for. All he did was run away to Novac at the thought of her not coming back. 

“Sure,” he responds and after that they fall into a comfortable silence, sipping whiskey and listening to the radio, no different than any night before she left.

She’s half asleep sometime later with her head resting on his shoulder when he moves. His arms reappear a second later, one under her knees, the other around her back, as he picks her up and lays her down on the bed. She stretches, unconstricted without her boots and armor on anymore, but almost feeling half-naked in just a t-shirt and jeans. Boone lies down across from her and she meets his eyes, the space between them not so infinite tonight, and he reaches out to brush his thumb across the red line of irritation on her throat. Her breath hitches. The rest of his fingers drop to rest gently on the side of her neck.

“You lose your bandanna somewhere?”

“Uh-” The question and the contact disarm her. She thinks he’s set a new personal record for number of questions asked in one night, at least with her. “No, it’s just- off. In my pack.”

His thumb brushes against the harsh red line again and she wonders if he feels her pulse jump. 

"At least tell me if it was them?"

"It wasn't Legion. Swear."

He seems to relax a little at that. “Well, if you ever want to talk, I’m a good listener, remember?”

The caricature of Carla she created in her head rambles on to Boone about nothing at all while he smiles at her, teeth showing, happier than ever. She brushes the vision away. Boone can make his own decisions, and if he didn’t want her here, she wouldn’t be here. She removes his hand from her throat and presses her lips against the pad of his thumb. When she lets go, he lets it linger against her bottom lip.

“I remember,” she confirms quietly, feels his thumb move with it, thinks for approximately 0.2 seconds and continues - “Mainly just want to forget, though, tonight,” she suggests, looking up at him through her eyelashes and narrowing the space between them. She doesn’t even know if she has the energy, but her body aches with wanting him. His eyes fall to her lips and back up. 

“Yeah?” he drags his thumb against her bottom lip again, pulling it downward. 

_I’m too easy._ “Yeah, Boone.”

With only a soft rustle from the sheets, he closes the rest of the distance and replaces his thumb with his lips, kissing her exactly how she never thought she’d be kissed by him but always wanted anyway. His thumb lands on her cheek, the rest of his large hand wrapping around the back of her head and pulling her closer still. Her heart plays timpany in her ears, mind filling with pure white light, as she opens her mouth against his and their tongues slide against each other. It’s slow, softer than they’ve ever kissed before, and she’s terrified that he’ll open his eyes, see her in the soft light of the room and realize just exactly what he’s doing, see that she’s not Carla and pull away. Especially terrified that she’ll open her eyes and Boone and the rest of Novac will disappear around her in the red haze of the Sierra Madre, all of this just a fever dream. The room threatens to overwhelm her and she feels the tickle of something in her throat but she tries to ignore it, knows it isn’t real. Just presses closer still, more desperate, grabbing his t-shirt at his stomach and pulling back.

Boone must have turned the radio off again before waking her, because the two of them seem to be the only sources of sound for miles. It’s loud to her ears, the soft noises she makes into his mouth when his hand drags a slow descent from her jaw to her chest, across her breast, down to the sliver of skin exposed at her stomach where her shirt has ridden up, and begins to make its way back up underneath. 

The haze in her mind levels out, she’s only able to focus on his skin against hers. His name spills out, an accident, only a breath, with his lips on her neck and his hand cupping her breast. 

“ _Boone_.” Doesn’t even have time to process the dawning terror of a crossed line before he mumbles into her neck a soft, “ _Yeah.”_ He brushes his lips against hers again and tells her like he told her before, _“I’m with you._ ”

She can hardly catch her breath as she wraps her arm around his head and pulls him in for another open-mouthed kiss. Her knee grazes his hardening dick and he grunts, his thumb stuttering as it brushes across her nipple. The sound fills her with some possessive, unnamed thing and she deepens the kiss. _This is different,_ and god, she hopes they don’t live to regret it in the morning. His hands fumble at the button of her jeans while she kisses him, and a second later his fingers reach past the waistband of her underwear and down into her slick folds. Her mouth slows with the contact and her moan gets strangled in the back of her throat. She tries not to say his name again and fails. _Fuck._ He grunts again as he presses one finger into her, slowly in and out, and then another, grinding his length against her thigh with the motions. His thumb begins to draw slow circles on her clit, warm and firm, and she drops her arm from around him, losing whatever little concentration she had left. He’s persistent and she loses track of time. White heat pools inside her, building, so slowly, building more, until she whispers, _"Want you"_ in his ear. He kisses her jaw, breath heavy against her neck, and pulls his hand away to take her jeans off. She distractedly kicks her legs out the rest of the way and takes her turn fumbling at his pants until they're off completely.

They stare each other in the eyes, breathing heavily, before their mouths close the distance once again. Her palm spreads against the hard muscles of his stomach and begins its slide upward, and when she pushes, he complies, surrenders onto his back and pulls her with him. His hands settle at her hips as she tugs her shirt off, and when he sits upward to pull off his own, he grinds against her wetness. They both fall back down moaning, him into the bed and her boneless against him. They breathe against each other and when he reaches behind her to remove that last offending piece of clothing, she moves again, sliding against him, heavy and slow. 

He groans into her mouth and his hips grind upward chasing the slick slide of her despite the protest from his mouth, “Can’t, when you’re-” but his deft fingers unhook it with no problem anyway. He throws it off to the side, capturing her lips in a victory kiss with her bare breasts pressed against his chest.

She lifts at the waist, only the slightest, reaches down to guide him into her, and he moans into her mouth as he pushes into her. _Always a victory, that sound._ And then they're moving with each other, a slow rhythm of skin against skin with his hands on her hips and her hands in the stubble of his hair. She was close already from his fingers, and it keeps building from the continued tenderness in his kisses, from each sigh he makes into her mouth, the slide of his dick as it hits her in the right spot with every thrust. They pick up a steady speed, still without urgency, still less rough than any other time before. Her chest aches with the words she wants to say to him as he pushes up into her, but she buries her face in his neck to keep them to herself. His hands disappear from her waist to guide her face back to his so he can kiss her again and her whole body thrums like a tuning fork as her orgasm hits her. She groans into his mouth as she rides out the shocks on him and a few seconds into hers, Boone loses his own rhythm and groans as he spills inside her. Afterward, she collapses against him, their chests pushing and pulling as they try to catch their breath. 

Eventually she rolls off of him to clean herself up, throws him a towel for him to do the same. He’s still in the bed when she comes back, eyes measured and calm when they meet hers. She clicks off the light before crawling back in with him and the moon bathes the room in a low glow through the sheer curtains. Boone tucks her into his side and runs his fingers up her arm and back down, her hair raising along the drawn lines. She presses her ear against his chest and his sniper slow heartbeat echoes through it. Her mind stays surprisingly quiet as her own heartbeat eventually slows to match. It pulses- _safe, safe,_ _safe_. She closes her eyes, lets the rhythm drag her into a mercifully dreamless sleep.


End file.
